Wednesday, 27 December 2017

Imitation is the best form of art

So, these past two weeks, I've QUIT and RESTARTED my 'career' as
a comic book illustrator several times over. Every time I sit down with
the intention of drawing something good, within a few hours, I'm
snapping my pencils in disgust at my clear lack of talent. However,
oddly enough, being good at drawing isn't necessarily important when it
comes to creating comics or art. It's just my own art snobbery that
prevents me from accepting anything that I draw as competent and worthy.

My
ultimate goal is to be able to draw my conspiracy based series, Get Woke, to a level where I wouldn't be embarrassed to show it to people.
The script is very funny (which can help carry poor-average art)
and conspiracy is so zeitgeist right now that I know it could be a hit.
However, even the first issue, clocking in at 40 pages, is going to take
me at the very least a year to draw! And that's if I can actually see it through
until the end.

Get Woke also features some of
the most famous people of all time set in world renowned locations.
It's a full-blown, giddy AF, international super-blockbuster of a
series, with racing action scenes and visual gags galore. I couldn't
have picked a harder story to try and draw. I do, however, have a
plan...

Peppa Pig: looks like it's drawn by a
five year old and is wildly successful. That's an extreme example but it
proves good drawing isn't essential. My problem is that if I'm not
drawing precise lines like Steve Dillon or Chris Weston I hate what I'm
creating. These are amazing artists who spent years crafting their
skills. I'll never be as good as these professional artists and that's
something I need to accept, despite how fucking obvious it is.

What
I need to do is get good at some more simplistic art. No less credit to
the creators of Adventure Time, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab and
cartoons of that ilke (it's all very purposefully simple and clever and
very hard to get right) but if I can somehow copy these simple styles
with flat colours and basic shapes, I believe I could evetually come to
some sort of level of drawing I'd be happy with. I think it would suit
the subject matter really well too.

Here's a load of reference pics for some of the other top kid's cartoons at the moment.

I have no doubt that, given tons of practice and some hard work, I can create something similar to one of the images above.